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Hello All, the NBA season starts Tuesday night, and what better way to kick off the season than to read and hear all of my rambling thoughts on Cleveland, Golden State, the Lakers, Knicks, Spurs, et al.

My second annual NBA preview: “NBA 2017: 10 big predictions for the new season…plus the winner” was published for CNN earlier today and you can read that here.

Please do hit me up with your feedback. Would love to hear what YOU think about this upcoming season.

No two teams have ever met in three NBA Finals in a row, not even during Larry and Magic’s epic Celtics-Lakers battles in the 1980s. But it’s almost certain that LeBron and Steph will meet again for the third year running.

And while I’ve got your attention, you can also stream another podcast stint I did back in April following Kobe Bryant’s final NBA game — that 60 point, 50 shot umm, classic [That’s the segment where I preceeded Hall of Fame basketball writer Bob Ryan]:

Two NBA features and one NBA podcast in five days. Bam. Now that’s what I call a busy week. But that’s what happens when the NBA comes to London; everything stops and I’m scrambling to go to open practices, conduct interviews, and eventually go to the big game itself — which was a thriller. Toronto beat Orlando in overtime at the O2 on Jan 14.

Both articles were Toronto Raptors related and featured an in-depth interview with team president and GM, Masai Ujiri. Ujiri was born and raised in Nigeria, played low-level college and pro hoops, yet is running an NBA team. Wow.

I don’t want to get all cliche, but honestly, he’s inspiring. If he can do that, then anyone can do anything if you work hard enough and set your mind to it. Seriously, the man overcame some massive obstacles, but had persistence and smarts to get to the top — and good on him.

First feature focuses on the Raptors being the NBA’s first truly global team (one Nigerian GM, seven international players, and one Sikh superfan: the Turbinator):

Last week I had the pleasure of returning for a guest spot on the Big E Radio Show with Elissa Walker Campbell to discuss the NBA off-season. We hit on Deandre Jordan’s back and forth with the Dallas Mavs and LA Clippers, along with the Knicks questionable first round pick, Kristaps Porziņģis, the Spurs rebuilding effort and a bunch of other topics.

For a print journalist, it’s always special to be able to discuss your thoughts on air, and I value these spots a great deal. In fact, the show has recently been syndicated on Sirius Satellite Radio, meaning it’s beamed out to millions of listeners all over the United States. Not bad for a kid who played high school ball at the American School of Kuwait!

Last week I went on the Big E Sports Show — streamed by Yahoo Sports Radio as well as Sirius Satellite Radio all over the United States — to talk about the NBA playoff picture and coaching carousel. A fun and lively segment, as always.

On another note, a rather meaty feature I wrote for CNN World Sports ran today. The topic: Overweight pro athletes competing at the highest level. Can they do it? How do they do it? Why do they do it? Do fad diets work? What are the pros/cons of dumping carbs altogether (as many top athletes are doing today)?

I weigh in on these topics by asking the experts — including Adebayo “The Beast” Akinfenwa of FC Wimbledon, and South African Rugby international Ollie le Roux (who weighed over 300 pounds in his heyday).

Here’s the intro, and a link to the complete article is at the bottom of the page:

Fat or fit? These ‘obese’ athletes are proud of their extra pounds

By Motez Bishara, CNN

(CNN) For a brief 10-minute spell at LA’s Staples Center earlier this month, one imposing NBA player got busy throwing his weight around — literally.

The man known as “Big Baby” — all 206 centimeters and 131 kilograms of him — contorted his body to sink improbable layups, dive for loose balls, rebound, block shots and turn into an all-around disruptive force for the Clippers in a win-or-go-home victory over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs.

A week later at Tropicana Field in Tampa, a 201 cm, 138 kg behemoth named C.C. Sabathia struck out nine batters in seven innings to clinch a win for the league-leading New York Yankees. The pitcher’s protruding belly shook like a washing machine on fast spin after each pitch.

In an era where top athletes obsess over body fat and favor kale smoothies over traditional pregame pasta, Sabathia and Glen “Big Baby” Davis are two of a handful of professional athletes thriving in spite of their girth.

“People look down on them, because they say they shouldn’t be out there,” Ollie le Roux, a former South Africa rugby international, told CNN. “But the nice thing about the big guy, the fat guy, the guy that doesn’t look athletic, is that when he runs over the little guy that looks like a superstar, it makes it more human.”

“It’s amazing to watch guys like Michael Jordan as well, but you don’t relate to them on a physical level like you do the overweight guy,” adds le Roux, who tipped the scales at 137 kilograms during the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

Over the past two weeks I’ve been assigned to write not one, but two features on the Kentucky Derby for CNN.com. I knew exactly nothing about horse racing, so I had to get up to speed on the sport pretty quickly.

Fortunately, I was able to secure an interview with Ahmed Zayat, an extremely affable gentleman who has three horses entered in the race, a feat that hasn’t been achieved in decades. Even more fortunately, he was Egyptian and happened to also be an alumnus of BU. So we struck up a friendly conversation off the bat and he very kindly granted me an extended interview and helped get me up to speed on the industry.

The next piece was a more ‘inside baseball’ look at horse racing. I’m linking the story to baseball on purpose, because the expression ‘hitting home runs’ was used so often by all the people I spoke to in the industry, that I could have been interviewing the New York Yankees.

In horse racing terms, hitting a home run is investing in a horse that wins big races and becomes a champion stallion. His stud fees (what owners charge other breeders to have his baby horses) can go up to $100k per birth, up to 100 times a year for 20 years. I can hear the sounds of “Cha-Ching!” as I’m typing.

On Wednesday I was tasked to write a story for CNN World Sports on the impending (Pretty Boy) Floyd Mayweather Vs Manny (The Pac Man) Pacquiao fight that’s playing out on social media. Once I scrolled through each of their Instagram accounts, the story pretty much wrote itself. They were hysterically polar opposite in personality and content. The Pac Man evoked his Christian faith at every opportunity, singing songs of Jesus with his wife at home and at church.

Mayweather…. well… it went more like this (Note: I could not include this particular clip in the story, lol):

Last week I phoned in for a regular guest slot on The Big E Sports Show with Elissa Walker Campbell. I love doing these spots, they’re great fun and the questions Elissa asks never fail to bring up perspectives on players and teams that I hadn’t really thought of. That’s the sign of a seasoned interviewer at work.

We waxed lyrical on the MVP race and the NBA playoff picture. The radio segment was split in two for podcast listeners. Here they are:

Meanwhile, last Friday I released an article on CNN with the headline “The $900,000 Monument to England’s Failure” about a giant sculpture by an Italian artist which records every loss the England football team has suffered since 1847. That’s a lot of losses. You can read the article here.